The Fantasy Premier League Rises!

The long wait is finally over and it’s back to business! That’s right, say goodbye to the sunshine, the great outdoors and everything else in your life. It’s time to get down and dirty, to analyse the initial fixtures and to create a squad that makes you salivate.

The Flying Dutchman and the Welsh Wizard

So the prices are out and unsurprisingly the two stars from last season command the highest fees of the entire game. Bale comes in at £12m, whereas the Dutch hitman RVP, is a hefty £14m. This leads to the biggest question surrounding your fantasy side, do you have one of them, do you spend over a quarter of your budget squeezing both in or do you pull out crazy option number 3 and ignore both of these stars?

In Spurs’ first 5 fixtures they travel to newly promoted sides Crystal Palace and Cardiff, whilst hosting Swansea and Norwich, with the North London derby squeezed into the middle. These are some attractive fixtures and the vast majority of managers will have Bale in their teams come the start of the season. It’ll take a brave fantasy football addict to do otherwise but of course if Bale does backfire, it would be a huge differential not having the Welshman.

With United facing Chelsea, Liverpool and City in their first 5, RVP is a lot less vital. This doesn’t mean that he won’t tear these sides apart, after all he is Robin Van Persie but Moyes could definitely have been given an easier start to life at the helm. At £14m he is incredibly costly and a couple of poor games could see managers jumping ship causing his price to drop. Alternatively, if he picks up from last season, we can expect the exact opposite. This could very well be the season where we see a player hit the £15m mark, any higher would be crazy.

Sniffing Out Value Like a Fantasy Football Hound

The key to a successful pre-season FPL squad is to hunt down the value players. If you’re looking to include some top notch players in your side like the above two, it’s important to supplement your team with some cheap, reliable squad players. It’s far from an easy task but it’s all part of the fun of finding that player that you hope no one else has noticed.

This includes those fantasy premier league gods that set the prices, they are not infallible and there are little gems out there to find. After all, no one can predict the future and value can be found especially in new players. Remember Michu from last season, now that’s what we call a value player. In no time, his price shot up as he found the back of the net like a seasoned Premier League professional. To see who’s joined our ranks this season, take a look at our summer signings post.

The Countdown

The next few weeks could decide the rest of your season. There’s nothing that we want more than to hit the ground running and signal our intent to scale the heights of fantasy football stardom. So in the leadup to the start of the season, we’ll be carrying out extensive research and all of our findings will be displayed on the site.

We’ll be following pre-season fixtures and reporting any interesting scores on our social media channels (see right in the sidebar), so join us to avoid missing out. All transfers will continue to be recorded in our summer signings post and spotlight articles will be shone on players we feel deserve a special mention.

Most importantly, we will be tackling the fixtures and finding out what team coverage is essential for the start of the season. This is vital when picking the right players to kick things off. We’ll also look into possible fixture rotations to find favourable runs from a number of sides with cheaper players.

We can’t wait for the season to get started and for those fantasy points to start rolling in. So make sure you don’t miss out on our fantasy football tips, news and advice by returning soon or joining us on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Roll on, roll up, it’s time to get addicted once more!

[box type=”info”]So what are your predictions for this season? Who do you think will be this season’s Michu? Who will be a flop? Who’s gonna win the league? Share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment in the box below. Alternatively, you can tweet us at @FFAddicted or leave a message on our Facebook page, GET INVOLVED![/box]